Introduction

Rapid Test Pro

To avoid serious (life-threatening) food allergies

It is said that one in three Japanese people have some type of allergy. In particular, food allergy morbidity is estimated to be approximately 5-10% in infants, approximately 5% in young children and 1.5-3% in children in school age, with this trend increasing in recent years1) 2). Moreover, not only in Japan, but worldwide, problems with allergies have increased in severity. To prevent food allergy reaction, avoiding foods which trigger an allergic response is considered important.

In Japan, 7 specified ingredients (egg, milk, wheat, buckwheat, peanut, shrimp and crab) which trigger allergic responses are required to be labeled on food packaging in the market due to the regulations in the Food Sanitation Act. Those ingredients were chosen for their frequency of incidents and severity.3)

In order to avoid contamination with the food allergens during the manufacturing process at the food-processing plant, it is necessary to manage food allergens such as in raw materials, interim products and final products. As a process control, a cleaning check such as swab testing in the food-processing line is also effective to avoid food allergen contamination. Rapid Test Pro is a simplified test kit (qualitative test kit) for food allergens based on an immunochromatography method, and is suitable to quickly and easily identify contamination of food allergens.

Rapid Test Pro is used to detect food allergens (egg, milk, wheat, buckwheat and peanut) in a sample, based on the immunochromatography method. When the sample solution is applied on the test stick, a red-purple line will appear on the test window, if food allergens are contained in the sample (5ppm and more). Alternatively, if none of the food allergens are contained in the sample (less than 5ppm), a line will not appear on the test window.

Features of Rapid Test Pro

The reaction time of Rapid Test Pro is basically 15 minutes. Even with an extraction procedure, measurement can be performed within one hour. This easy and rapid test will save time in food processing lines where working efficiency is important to manage.

For example, in the production process at a food factory, products with no food allergens may be produced on the same production line after other products with food allergens are processed. Rapid Test Pro is a useful tool to confirm contamination condition.

The extraction solution used in Rapid Test Pro utilizes the same technology as our Food Allergen ELISA Kit II4) that is an official method of food allergen testing in Japan. With this feature, even though Rapid Test Pro is a simplified test kit, it is able to test highly processed foods with a lower false-negative risk. For more details, see Morinaga technology.

1) Japanese Pediatric Guideline for Food Al Japanese Pediatric Guideline for Food Allergy 2012
2) School Manual for anaphylactic reaction due to food allergy
3) Consumer Affairs Agency, Government of Japan, website (http://www.caa.go.jp/en/index.html)